Part of the Education Amendments of 1972, Title IX prohibits educational institutions receiving federal funds from discriminating on the basis of sex. Although commonly associated with women’s high school and college athletics, that was not the law’s original purpose.
In the late 1990s, organizations, including the Society of Women Engineers, began discussing how the amendment might be applied to science, technology, education, and mathematics, or STEM, education, and Title IX has become a key component of SWE’s advocacy efforts during the past 20 years. In the mid-1970s, however, the implications of Title IX for SWE and its programs were far from clear as legislators, government employees, and school administrators struggled to understand and balance the intent with the letter of the law.
The Society received numerous reports in 1973 and 1974 of universities pressuring SWE collegiate sections to open their membership to men. Although the students largely supported this change, the Society’s bylaws at the time limited its membership to women, concerning university administrators attempting to adhere to a confluence of federal antidiscrimination laws and regulations passed in the 1960s and 1970s, including Title IX. Recognizing that SWE’s gender-restrictive membership policies didn’t match the ethos of the time and also made it difficult for SWE collegiate sections to receive institutional recognition and support, the Society amended its bylaws in June 1976, opening membership to men.
However, new confusion emerged surrounding SWE’s career guidance program. Sections and members-at-large presented certificates to high school girls excelling in science and mathematics, encouraging them to pursue engineering. But, in 1976, sections began reporting that some high schools refused to participate, fearing that certificates awarded only to women might lead to claims of reverse discrimination. Trying to salvage the Pacific Northwest Section’s certificate program, Alice O’Byrne, career guidance chairman and a member of SWE’s newly formed Title IX implications study committee, asked Sen. Warren G. Magnuson, D-Wash., to intervene.
Sen. Magnuson explained in a Sept. 13, 1976, letter to the Seattle office of the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, that, “As you may know, women engineers now constitute a scant 2% of their profession. It is through programs like these that the Society hopes to expand the ranks of women engineers.” Citing recent revisions to Title IX and its enforcement, the senator urged the department to support programs like SWE’s, “which are not merely harmless in terms of sex discrimination but are designed to encourage more women to become professionals in a male-dominated world.”
School administrators periodically questioned the certificate program’s Title IX compliance throughout the 1980s. However, Sen. Magnuson’s letter of support and SWE’s improved understanding of the law and its bylaws revisions convinced the Society’s leadership that it could continue focusing its programs on precollege and college-aged women to help remedy the persistent gender imbalance in engineering.
Watch the Archives Come to Life!
You can watch SWE archivist Troy Eller English present photos, artifacts, and inside information on SWE’s early history with Title IX on the SWE YouTube channel.
